Cici Wu Selected Press - Empty Gallery
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Cici Wu
Selected Press
Marcus Civin, Cici Wu: Lantern Strike (Strong Loneliness), The Brooklyn Rail, 2021 Jul - Aug
ArtSeen
Cici Wu: Lantern Strike (Strong Loneliness)
Histories of cinema tend to follow a timeline of technical and mechanical innovation. In acknowledging cinema’s precursors, or proto-cinema, historians point
to early shadow puppets, magic lantern slide projectors, and the first instances of photography capturing movement over time.
In Lantern Strike (Strong Loneliness), her second solo exhibition at 47 Canal, Cici Wu presents nine sculptures, four drawings, and a video, all dated 2021,
that invite us to expand our understanding of proto-cinema by letting light, perception, and philosophy lead the way. Wu considers this reimagining of early
cinema to be “outside the existing framework of cinema history.” She endeavors to align proto-cinema with what she terms "light, optical experiences, and
abstraction of images."
This includes the timeless play of light and shadow from sources we sometimes take for granted, such as lamps or moonlight. We also might think about how
people can interpret the same light differently. Firelight, for example, can suggest ceremony, celebration, light chasing off darkness, and home, but it can also
mean danger, destruction, and war.
Lantern Strike (Strong Loneliness) encourages togetherness, an Asian transnationalism, and solidarity across borders despite national and international crises.
Wu’s nine paper lanterns approximate specific local lantern designs, and their titles include the corresponding telephone country codes. Foreign Object #2
Umbra and Penumbra (+84), referring to Vietnam, is a blue diamond-shaped lantern hanging from a stick that rests in a round glass vase on a low wood plinth.
Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (+63 prototype), signifying the Philippines, is a pink star-shaped lantern, also hanging from a stick with a wooden
armature and a similar plinth supporting it. There is a rabbit for Hong Kong, a pagoda for Indonesia, and a flower for Myanmar. Thailand hangs the highest,
while the South Korean lantern seems to lay on its side. The lanterns cluster together like a glowing pre-colonial or postcolonial reunion, a coalition of neigh-
bors, protesters, or a union on strike.
Further exploring cinematic resonance, Wu embeds digital cameras in her lanterns. They’re inactive in the gallery, signifying images to come. Lanterns often
have text written on them—names, wishes, or riddles—but the messages of Wu’s lanterns are also yet-to-be-determined. The lanterns resemble a watchful
community—watching us and watching each other—perhaps wary as a result of the violent past, enduring colonialist attitudes, and an uncertain future. The
digital camera, like the lantern, processes and produces light; at either end of a temporal spectrum, the camera and the lantern have a lot in common.
Wu’s drawings use ink, mineral pigments, and glue on Japanese paper to historicize her interest in these lights. Lantern Study 01 (Woman Admiring Plum
Blossoms at Night) and Lantern Study 02 (Lighting a Hanging Lantern for the Obon Festival) are based on Japanese woodblock prints, the first from the 18th
century by Suzuki Harunobu, the second from the 19th century by Shibata Zeshin. In Lantern Study 01, a woman uses a lantern at night to provide light as Cici Wu, Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (+852
carambola), 2021. Bamboo wire, paper, glue, metal wire,
she gazes at a blooming tree. In Lantern Study 02, another woman lights a hanging lantern as a signal to her ancestors. In these two intimate scenarios, the neopixel led, opencv camera, raspberry pi 4B, power adapter
lanterns, like cameras, assist with connection to other worlds. board, switch, led, micro-usb cable, lithium battery, memory
card, artist’s lantern holder and plinth, 51 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 14 3/4
TS (Celestials) is based on a section of the Tang Dynasty silk scroll, Eighty-Seven Celestials, sometimes, perhaps erroneously, attributed to eighth-century inches. Courtesy 47 Canal. Photo: Joerg Lohse.
Chinese painter Wu Daozi. The scroll depicts a procession of gods carrying decorated poles and wearing hairstyles incorporating what appear to be ribbons,
flowers, and gems. There are no lanterns in this spiritual drawing, but the scroll makes reference to cinema. A scroll unfurls over time like film.
Installation view: Lantern Strike, 47 Canal, New York, 2021. Courtesy 47 Canal. Photo: Joerg Lohse. Cici Wu, Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (+95 prototype),
2021. Bamboo wire, paper, glue, metal wire, neopixel led, opencv
camera, raspberry pi zero, micro-usb cable, artist’s lantern holder
Strong Loneliness, a single channel, nine and half minute video, serves as the final scene in the exhibition. Wu made the video with one of the lantern and plinth. 48 1/2 × 16 1/4 × 16 1/4 inches. Courtesy 47 Canal. Pho-
cameras programmed to recognize shadows. Shadow detection is usually used to clean up images, sometimes in surveillance. Lantern camera in hand, to: Joerg Lohse.
Wu traveled through New York City. In the video recording, her pathways look like a fast-moving patchwork of layered lightmaps. Realistic details, like
an aerial view of Manhattan and a protest, are fleeting, quickly overtaken by colorful shapes. We hear children playing, but we don’t see them. Buildings
become warped and rounded, as if the lantern camera is imposing a fisheye view. The city is no longer entirely architectural or human. Instead, it is an
exuberant mash-up of color, line, and sound. Shapes change everywhere along the way.
In Wu’s work, lanterns address spatial, historical, spiritual, and political realms. And with lanterns in hand, abstraction follows fast. According to Chinese
legend, an emperor once planned to burn down a hunter’s village after the hunter accidentally killed the emperor’s prized bird. Instead, the villagers
worked together to light lanterns and set off fireworks, fooling the emperor’s soldiers, who stayed away because, from afar, it looked like the village was
already on fire. In this legend, the interpretation or misinterpretation of light saved the community. It became the stuff of legend. Or, Wu might submit,
it was an optical experience worthy of being considered proto-cinema. It was a summoning of light and powerful and multivalent symbolism.
Installation view: Lantern Strike, 47 Canal, New York, 2021. Courtesy
47 Canal. Photo: Joerg Lohse.
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/07/artseen/Cici-Wu-Lantern-Strike-Strong-Loneliness
© Copyright 2000-2021 The Brooklyn Rail
Christie Lee, “‘Curtain’ art exhibition in Hong Kong draws you in and explores the power of a
piece of cloth to frame, conceal or reveal”
South China Morning Post, Arts & Culture, 2021 May 23
‘Curtain’ art exhibition in Hong Kong draws you in and explores the
power of a piece of cloth to frame, conceal or reveal
• ‘Curtain’ is a collaboration between Para Site art space and Shanghai’s Rockbund Art
Museum
• Twenty-three artists show their works in a show that was two years in the making
Christie Lee
23 May, 2021
Curtains conceal. They invite speculation. They can also be a framing device.
In the latest collaboration between Para Site art space and Shanghai’s Rockbund Art
Museum, 23 artists have used this malleable and potent symbol in a compelling
exhibition spread across Para Site’s North Point location and an exhibition space at Soho
House in Sheung Wan.
This show has been two years in the making, since Rockbund initiated it in response to
the two institutions’ previous co-production, “An Opera for Animals”.
“I think it’s [an] ongoing laboratory, and I think this is what exhibition making should be
about,” says Cosmin Costinas, executive director and curator of Para Site, who adds that
closed borders have made it a real feat to create coherent negotiations between the
artists’ divergent positions and interests.
Antigone (2015) by Minouk Lim.
“Curtain” was meant to be staged with live performances
but the pandemic has prevented that, so it has been
curated in a way where the multifarious ideas of the theme
are activated by the audience.
One of the most powerful works at the Soho House venue
is Gustav Metzger’s Historic Photographs: To Walk Into –
Massacre on the Mount (1996). One lifts a light beige cloth
to see a chilling photo taken in 1990 after the Israeli police
killed 21 Palestinians following a dispute between Jewish and Muslim groups on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Once the curtain is lifted, the proximity to the greatly magnified image forces us to
confront the monstrosity. However, your eyes are only able to see sections of the
photograph at a time because of the scale. The work encourages a visceral interaction
with the image – critical in an age when we are desensitised from a constant
bombardment of sensational images – while questioning the limitation of understanding.
Another work is a video of Leigh Bowery performing at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery in
1988. Donning various outlandish costumes made from drapery, the outrageous
performance artist strikes poses in front of a one-way mirror.
“The curtain is something that lifts, used to reinvent the self. It allows you to choose what
to put on for the audience. It hides, but also empowers through the act of hiding, as you
get to decide what version of yourself to present to the world,” Costinas explains.
A video of Leigh Bowery
performing at the Anthony
d’Offay Gallery in 1988.
Other artists use curtain as a
material and embed messages
in it. For example, Hu
Yinping’s Xiao Fang (2015)
weaves stories into the fabric.
Long strips of stanchions –
ubiquitous barriers seen
everywhere during social
distancing – are emblazoned
with bite-sized messages of
care in Chinese, such as “No matter how busy you are, don’t forget to eat regularly”.
In Stella
Zhang’s 0-
Viewpoint-8-1, 2
and 3 (2015), gaps
and tears,
reminiscent of
female genitalia,
are made in black
fabric forcibly
pulled together. It
0-Viewpoint-8-1,2 and 3, (2015), by Stella Zhang. is full of tension, a
code that emerges from the rumpled canvases.
It is interesting to see how such a large show unfolds across different locations, and the
North Point site evokes a markedly different atmosphere. As co-curator Celia Ho says, this
space is immersive and has more “points of activation” inviting visitors to smell the air, or
crawl under a cloth.
“At Soho House, you have a full view of the city, you’re much more in control of your
place, whereas [in the North Point space], you’re confined within a universe created by
[the artists and curators], It’s interesting to have two different modes of navigating the
exhibition,” Costinas adds.
Upon entering the space, one is enveloped by the scent of herbs and spices.
It comes from Trancing Lap Hung (2021) where Tan Jing imagines her grandfather
reincarnated as a dog to pursue memories of his youth spent in the subtropics of Thailand
before being repatriated to China in the 1950s. A few paw prints on the floor guide to a
beaded curtain, made with herbs, soil and
laced with a sweet aroma.
Chantal Akerman’s Walking Next to One’s
Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge (Part 2),
2004. Photo: courtesy of Chantal Akerman
Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery
But it’s not the first thing you see in the space, as eyes are inevitably drawn to
Metzger’s Historic Photographs: To Crawl Into-Anschluss (1996), which invites visitors to
literally crawl under a gigantic yellow cloth to come face to face with an image of Jewish
people who were forced to scrub the streets of Vienna in 1938.
Zhou Tao, Blue and Red (2014), by Zhou
Tao.
In the case of Chantal Akerman’s Walking Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge
(Part 2) (2004), the actual opening of a door by the audience parallels the artist’s discovery
of her maternal grandmother’s adolescent diary, discovered after her death at Auschwitz,
with fragments of the records reassembled in the video installation.
And in Foreign Object #2 Umbra and Penumbra (prototype, 2021), Cici Wu creates a
sculptural lantern that supposedly “captures shadows”, evoking the early days of modern
cinema. Mysterious and fragile, the device forms a sensory link between the viewer and
images on the screen that represent the artist’s investigation into histories that “resist the
nationalist and colonial narratives of mainstream cinema”, the catalogue says.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/
3134357/curtain-art-exhibition-hong-kong-draws-
you-and-explores
© 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd.
Poetic Justice for Yu Man-hon: Cici Wu
Billy Tang
“A Bolex camera is like a spiritual tool, just like how with projections of investigation reports and missing-
paper lanterns had a similar purpose in the past. person posters, traces and reminders of his previous life.
Both are technologies related to a spiritual way of The artist chose Jonathan Chang, the Taiwanese for-
searching for things.” mer child actor famous for playing the boy in Edward
—Cici Wu1 Yang’s film Yi Yi (2000), to channel the spirit of Yu
Man-hon. Other ethereal fragments are included to mark
New York-based artist Cici Wu is interested not only in an unexpected migratory turn from Hong Kong to
the materiality of the tools and machines we use to snowy Minneapolis—a place where Chang lives in seclu-
observe the world, but also in the myriad ways our worldly sion, away from his cinematic representation. Next to
experiences are propelled by subtle interactions among the screening, a series of faux colonial-era lights—former
language, memory, rituals, sociopolitical structures, film props in HK movies—fill the gallery space. Each
and different states of awareness and emotions that can lamp is carefully restored and altered: trinkets and bells
be triggered by moving images and their ambient effects. added, or dim bulbs wrapped with bamboo frames,
Turning increasingly toward the supernatural, Wu’s work crafted into paper lanterns or turned into animal sculp-
alternates between drawing, film projection, and sculp- tures. These works are either suspended low to the
ture, skillfully interweaving the human and the nonhuman ground from the ceiling, or strewn across the exhibition
into surrealistic, dreamlike installations. floor. Textual fragments mix together with parts of the
original investigation report. Like harbingers or amulets,
The 16mm film Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon (2019) these words have been pasted onto the various skins
opens with a sequence of white light refracted through of the lights as “subtitles” in combination with phrases
paper cutout shapes. In and out of focus, as well as such as “justice and hope,” “forgotten to forget,” and
passing between positive and negative imagery, a subtle “Memory Cow.”
animation of emoticon shapes floats amid a pale-blue In an interplay between the light sculptures and the oneir-
sea of flickering celluloid. Against an atmospheric sound- ic narrative arc on-screen, the figure of Yu Man-hon
track by Victor Au, different intensities of color saturate drifts within a meditative loop, and together as the audi-
the screen before abruptly cutting to the back of someone’s ence, we are pulled in to follow the different fragments
head looking out to a body of water. It is in this mo- and traces of places related to him. There are immeasur-
ment that a voice “enters” the film, speaking first in Man- able feelings of loss when something important to us
darin, then in Cantonese, and finally in English: disappears. It is here that the unfinished return in the title
“Wo jiào Yu Wen-han—Ngo giu Yu Man-hon—My name is suggests a redemptive potential, a return prolonged and
Yu Man-hon.” extended into the future as Yu Man-hon gradually awak-
The calm invocation of this name comes as an unexpected ens with a new memory and state of awareness.
surprise given the more than twenty years since the In what Ackbar Abbas attributes to an ability to “[work]
well-known and still-unresolved case of his disappearance. with disappearance [. . .] using disappearance to deal with
Yu Man-hon was a fifteen-year-old with autism who disappearance,”3 Hong Kong itself is arguably a city de-
could barely speak at all. He let go of his mother’s hand fined by its ability to resiliently exist on borrowed time
and ran into an MTR subway station, becoming sepa- in the face of a constantly receding identity. It is with-
rated from her in the crowd and managing to get as far in this context that Wu makes a point of imagining Yu
away as the Lo Wu land border with China. There he Man-hon not as a symbol of suffering or something
somehow was able to run undetected through the tightly forever taken away, but as a defiant spirit able to roam
controlled checkpoints, getting to the bridge until he again in this world of ours. When Yu Man-hon went
was finally caught. His unintelligible cries led him to be missing it was August, the time of the Hungry Ghost Fes-
taken for an illegal immigrant and he subsequently tival. In the liminal moment between living and dead,
became caught in a legal gray area. He was sent back and Wu looks to the spiritual realm to imagine a return that
forth across the border before being left to wander the is also a day of reckoning for the failures of law and order
streets in Shenzhen alone, never to be found again. More to protect the most vulnerable in our societies. By rewir-
than the “cold-hearted indifference”2 displayed by ing our connection to the loss of Yu Man-hon, remem-
immigration policies on both sides, Yu Mon-hon’s disap- brance is transformed into resistance and perpetuates a
pearance quickly turned into cross-border folklore, will to keep the imagination alive, anticipating some
re-triggering the fear and suspicion still unresolved in poetic justice that awaits us in the future.
the years since the handover.
The “unfinished return” alluded to in the film’s title and
repeated in her 2019 first Hong Kong solo exhibition 1 From a conversation with the artist, July 2020.
at Empty Gallery refers to Wu’s ambition to summon Yu 2 Carol A. G. Jones, Lost in China?: Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997
Hong Kong (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press: 2015), 118.
Man-hon back to our world. Woven into the film’s struc-
(The artist maintains an ongoing dialogue with Jones, most recently
ture and method of installation, the memory of Yu Man- at Asia Society Hong Kong Center, July 2020). The border has in fact
hon has been extended into layers of multiple “returns” been a site of disappearance for countless children, many of them
that call out to him. A montage of scenes offers hints to with cognitive disabilities.
where he could be passing: a market where he clutches 3 Ackbar Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1997), 8.
a lamp, a moment on a ferry accompanied by a paper cow,
glances of a bus depot scene, before passing through
the land border again. These moments are interspersed 111 Cici Wu, Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon (still), 2019.
Courtesy: the artist and Empty Gallery, Hong Kong
112 Cici Wu, Memory Cow (Mother), 2019; Subtitle 01 (One side different), 2019; Subtitle 01
(Forgotten to forget), 2019, Cici Wu: Unfinished Return installation view at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019.
Courtesy: Empty Gallery, Hong Kong. Photo: Michael Yu
113 Cici Wu, Upon Leaving the White Dust installation view at 47 Canal, New York, 2017–18.
Courtesy: the artist and 47 Canal, New York. Photo: Joerg Lohse
114 Cici Wu, Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon (still), 2019.
Courtesy: the artist and Empty Gallery, Hong Kong
115 Cici Wu, Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light (Taro Masushio), 2017.
Mousse Magazine 73 C. Wu, B. Tang Courtesy: the artist and 47 Canal, New York. Photo: Joerg Lohse 110 Tidbits 111
Mousse Magazine 73 112 Tidbits 113
© Mousse Magazine and Publishing2020
http://moussemagazine.it/mousse-73-out-now-2020/
Mousse Magazine 73 114 Tidbits 115Cici Wu’s “Unfinished Return”
by Leo Goldsmith
March 26–June 6, 2019
Empty Gallery, Hong Kong
June 6, 2019
For many, the story of Yu resonated as an allegory of Hong Kong’s relations with Mainland China in the
early days following the handover of the former British colony to the People’s Republic of China in 1997.
There is indeed the shocking indifference of the authorities, especially in dealing with the most vulnerable.
But there is also the sense of loss, of blurred national and cultural identities, and of the border as a liminal
zone where one’s very body might dissolve into evanescence. Revisiting the story some 20 years later, Wu’s
exhibition ponders the cultural resonance of Yu’s ambiguous fate, even offering a speculative dénouement
to the mystery, staging Yu’s reappearance in Hong Kong as an altered, ghostly presence in a city that has
itself irrevocably changed.
Located across the 18th and 19th floors of the Grand Marine Center near Aberdeen Harbour, Empty Gal-
lery draws visitors from the building’s elevator and straight into a very dimly lit antechamber, which leads to
an almost hidden corridor that connects to the gallery’s similarly shadowy foyer. The darkened network of
passageways at first resembles a labyrinth more than a gallery, but the experience is more seductive than
claustrophobic. Sharing the space with another solo exhibition (by the artist Tishan Hsu), Wu’s show is ac-
cessed by descending a flight of stairs into the gallery’s lower level, where viewers follow the dim glow of
Wu’s light sculptures and video projection, and its soundtrack, a dense collage of fragmentary voices and
chiming bells.
Entitled The Unfinished Return of Yu Man Hon (2019), the video forms the centerpiece of the exhibition.
which also includes a series of mixed-media light sculptures. Indeed, the video is itself an assemblage,
mainly filmed on 16mm (with some VHS home-movie footage), and compositing discrete sequences of
a young man, presumably Yu, traversing a set of diverse transitional spaces (airport, bus terminal, metro
trains, ferries) in a distinctive knit wool cap. Pushing the threshold of the analog film’s capacity to register
View of Cici Wu’s “Unfinished Return” at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019. (Left) Cici Wu, Unfinished Return of its images, Wu frequently finds the young man’s figure dissolving in a haze of blue-white-pink light or blur-
Yu Man Hon, 2019. Video Installation, film prop lamp, paper, bamboo wire, glue, video (16mm transferred to ring into the background as he’s captured in fogged-lens images of snowy landscapes, or the chaos of an
digital, 18:35 min), dimensions variable. (Middle) Cici Wu, Memory Cow (Mother), 2019. Paper, bamboo wire,
glue, handkerchief, investigation report, photograph, raincoat, silicone 105 x 60 x 102 centimeters. (Right) Cici
MTR station or busy marketplace. In a surrealist flourish, Yu is also accompanied on his journey by a small
Wu, Subtitle 01 (One side different), 2019. Paper, bamboo wire, glue, film prop lamps, bells, wire, raincoat, 70 x cow constructed from glued paper on a bamboo wire frame, and featuring photocopied scraps from the
70 x 25 centimeters. Image courtesy of Empty Gallery, Hong Kong. Photo by Michael Yu. official police report on the disappearance pasted onto its hide—which is also exhibited alongside the
other sculptures.
The “unfinished return” in the title of New York–based artist Cici Wu’s first solo exhibition The presence of this cow—as a sculpture titled Memory Cow (2019)—in the gallery space, and the ambient
in Hong Kong refers to a legendary incident in the city’s recent history. In August 2000, Yu illumination offered by the light sculptures to complement the video projection, creates a subtle sensory
Man Hon, a 15-year-old autistic boy, was separated from his mother in an MTR metro station link between the objects and images that Wu has brought together here. These mixed-media sculptures—
in Kowloon. Somehow, the young man made it to a checkpoint at Hong Kong’s border with delicate, hybrid constructions from paper, bamboo wire, plastic film-prop chandeliers, and assorted found
Shenzhen, where he was able to cross into Mainland Chinawithout identity documents. Once ephemera—bear titles such Subtitle 01 (Justice and Hope) (2019) and Subtitle 01 (Forgotten to Forget)
on the other side of the border, unable to make his way back to Hong Kong, Yu disappeared, (2019), further hinting at processes of linguistic and cultural translation at play. In a sense, these objects
never to be found. bridge the ephemeral and imaginary spaces onscreen and the material and historical worlds to which
they allude. Further scrambling these distinctions, Wu adds an intertextual layer by casting for the role
of Yu the Taiwanese actor Jonathan Chang, most widely known for his part, at age nine, in Edward Yang’s
exquisite family melodrama Yi Yi (2000). Wu’s video even cites a small fragment of Yi Yi’s soundtrack—the
heartrending moment at the end of the film in which Chang’s adorable adolescent character, dressed in a
tuxedo, reads a letter to his recently departed grandmother at her funeral and wonders, “Perhaps one day
I’ll find out where you’ve gone.” Thus, even the biography of the actor becomes curiously entangled in the
mystery.
© ARTAGENDA 2019
https://www.art-agenda.com/features/272123/ci-
ci-wu-s-unfinished-return8 Views NEW YORK 189
Cici Wu beam of the projector, cast enigmatic cuboid clay cartons with glass drinking
“Upon Leaving the White Dust” shadows that appear in somewhat jum- straws. Across many scales, these repre-
47 Canal bly, unfamiliar compositions on the gal- sent techniques of overcoming distance,
18.04. – 27.05.2018 lery wall. Psychologically loaded, these from touch, most simply, to industrial
have an unruly, disruptive implication – and globalised modes of transportation.
When Korean-American artist and nov- most people aren’t happy when some Yet a corollary of each of these technol-
elist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s unfin- object interrupts the hypnotic rev- ogies is displacement: in a psychoana-
ished film White Dust From Magno- erie of what Barthes called the “cine- lytic mode, that of desire, as structured
lia (1980) was screened at New York’s matographic cocoon”. Shadows index a by the relation to the mother, and, in a
Museum of Art and Design in 2017, cinematic apparatus, yet their presence geopolitical mode, that of diaspora, as
Cici Wu was in the audience, capturing is traumatically unresolved and politi- introduced in Cha’s work, and Wu’s in
it with her Foreign Object No. 1, Fluffy cally impartial, hinting towards the fleet- turn. The installation holds these forces
Light (2016). This artwork – a func- ing constitution of the dream-screen, in uneasy equivalence.
tional, globular sculpture – records light and its entrapment of the spectatorial A flag, made of rice paper and plastic,
data at twenty-four frames per second. subject. Every so often, for a fraction droops from the ceiling, with Chinese
The result of Wu’s recording, converted of a second, the light brusquely drops inscriptions reading “woman, man”
to digital video, is the centerpiece of as a scene changes in White Dust. The on one side and “father, mother” on
“Upon Leaving the White Dust”, her effect is quietly destabilising. the other. Deliberate, tantalisingly
Photo: Andy Keate Courtesy the artist
first solo exhibition at 47 Canal. The All handmade (with the exception of detached, and romantic in its logic of
pacific flicker of the thirty-minute a half-arched section of a model train fuzzy metonymy and formal transfor-
looped projection of the movie sans track), the sculptures constitute a trans- mation, the exhibition complicates
images frames an ensemble of sculp- latory reading of Cha’s notes for White the individuated subject that is for-
tures, almost all of which are small, Dust, and score certain thematics of mulated by dominant apparatuses of
acutely allegorical objects laid in a grid her practice more largely. A scattering representation, delicately undermin-
on the gallery’s floor and refract Cha’s of LEDs in hand-blown glass bulbs ing some of the slippages of post-
literary and artistic accomplishments. are connected by enameled wire, glow- structuralist thought. In its afterglow
In 1982, Cha left behind White Dust ing with the conviviality of jellyfish. is a paean to the legacy of a non-white
following her unjustifiable death at the Unglazed ceramics make the majority of postmodern avant-garde in the US, in
age of thirty-one. A film and historical the installation’s recognisable elements: which a social and psychological dis-
novel begun in 1980, it tells the story aeroplanes (one grounded, yet without tance regarding Asia is troubled, a
of a young woman who is Korean yet wheels, another wingless), steam trains, poetics of displacement collapsed.
resides in China following Japan’s 1909– tenderly crossed hands, and strange, Harry Burke
1945 occupation of her native land
(Cha’s parents grew up in Manchuria,
present day northeast China, in exile).
She is also known for the experimental # 56 SUMMER 2018
novel Dictee (1982) and edited Appara-
Courtesy the artist
tus: Cinematographic Apparatus (1980),
Photo: Joerg Lohse, Courtesy the artist & 47 Canal, New York
with contributions by Roland Barthes,
Jean-Louis Baudry, Maya Deren, and
5 Cha herself, among others. This vol-
ume approached film theory through
the psychoanalytic and poststructuralist
lenses then being developed in France,
underlining the ideological significance
of the mechanics of representation,
and the nuanced political meanings of
h the viewer’s relation to filmmaker, cam-
e era, screen, image, and so forth.
), This anthology, as well as Cha’s unfished
or work, provides the conceptual under-
m pinning of Wu’s project. Her sculptural Cici Wu, Upon Leaving the White Dust, 2017/2018
s- works, arranged in columns represent- Ceramic, clay, handmade glass, silicone, plaster, white fabric, rice paper, ink, https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/en/
of ing the eleven pages of Cha’s White plastic drop cloth, sponge, mop, Lehmann Gross Bahn train tracks, white LED, issue/56-summer-2018
o Dust storyboard and bathed in the enameled wire, dupont connectors, arduino, video, dimensions variable武雨濛谈“离开白色尘埃之时”
2018.05.14
记忆，作为集体性的源泉，具有近乎实体和有机的维度，那里时间和空间相互叠加。它代表
着时间的躯体，是位于既永恒又无法衡量的时间体内部的计量单位，其中我们的存在如同伤
口一般被记录着。”
这些文字写于1980年。我好像从来没有真正理解过亚洲人可以来自不同的民族和文化，也
就是说，这世界上有韩裔美国人，也有韩裔中国人，或者越南裔菲利宾人，甚至韩裔俄罗斯
人、日本裔巴西人等等。他们的存在大部分是因为战争，无论是武力上的还是文化上的。车
致力于讨论的并非政治或者身份差异，她想探索的是如何减少人与人之间的地理距离和心理
间隔。我非常受这个想法的影响，并且也开始意识到自己的存在也许真的是这个世界的一道
伤口。当然，我也清楚地知道并不是每个人都有必要或想要成为这种“伤口”。
我一直把电影院看作一个承载图像的场所，并从这个载体里得到很多灵感。在《离开白色尘
埃之时》中，你只能看到单调的光的明暗变化，没有图像。去年纽约艺术设计美术馆放映了
武雨濛（Cici Wu），“离开白色尘埃之时”展览现场，2018.
《来自蒙古的白色尘埃》仅三十分钟的电影素材，放映期间电影院的光线被按照每秒二十四
帧的速度记录在我做的一个手工小设备（Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light, 2017）里，然后
转化成数码影像。我觉得观看这些光的时候，就像是在观看一个人转身离开影院的瞬间所体
武雨濛（Cici Wu）1989年生于北京，成长于香港，目前生活和工作于纽约。她的个展“离 验到的感觉。
开白色尘埃之时”围绕美国艺术家、作家车学庆[1]关于文化和记忆的未完成讨论展开。武雨
濛用她自己发明的录光装置，将车学庆未完成的影像素材转译成光，再转化为数码影像；地 地上的物件包括烧过的陶瓷、未烧过的泥、玻璃、硅胶、玩具火车轨道等等，都是《来自蒙
面散落的数十件手工物件则回应车的剧本故事线。本文中，她谈到了在前全球化时代亚裔身 古的白色尘埃》故事分镜的内容。唯一离开地面的是一块透明的蓝色塑料布，夹在两张宣纸
份的塑造和全球化的今天亚裔的身份自洽。展览将在纽约 47 Canal持续至5月27日。 之间，一面写着“女男”，另一面写的是“父母”。我第一次在《听之任之》 里看到“女
男”的时候，是用西方女性主义的思维方式想到一些理论。但另一方面，在研究的过程中，
《离开白色尘埃之时》（Upon Leaving the White Dust，2018）是此次同名展览上的唯一 我发现车在描述战争中去世的年轻女性革命者时，会写道：“她是由一个父亲，一个母亲，
一件作品。该作品（展览）的命名一部分来源于美国艺术家、作家车学庆生前未完成的一部 所生。”在墙上的投影把所有的东西都变成了中性的影子，是一些未完成的意义。
电影：《来自蒙古的白色尘埃》（White Dust from Mongolia ，1980）[2] ；另一部分来源
于我对“离开”这个动作在时间和空间中的想象。此外，我也希望可以赋予“白色尘埃”多 [1] 车学庆（Theresa Hak Kyung Cha）1951年生于韩国釜山，13岁随家庭搬到旧金山，
种象征。 在加利福尼亚大学伯克利分校主修比较文学和艺术，其作品关注由政治及地域变迁带来的文
化、记忆的错位和变异，形式包括行为表演、录像、绘画和写作等等，1982年在纽约遇害。
我的确想把车学庆带回到纽约当下的艺术现场，因为她的一些思想很值得被再次关注。1980
年，全球化大潮还没形成，身份和文化尚未像今天这样被大规模资本化。在这样的年代，车 [2]《来自蒙古的白色尘埃》包括一部电影和一本历史小说，均未完成。伯克利艺术馆/太平
学庆想要发掘关于人的故事，想知道那一小部分从韩国流亡到伪满洲的人是如何生活的，他 洋电影资料馆。
们的历史是什么，而并非利用表面的图像或视觉元素来构建某种形象，这让我感到很好奇。
我欣赏她作为一个亚裔美国艺术家，如何很早地意识到并开始为非美国白人观众而创作，一
个人就开启了全球艺术语境下创作的一种实验精神。更可贵的是，这种实验精神来得非常自 — 文/ 采访/吴建儒
然，似乎她天生就能理解文化之间的差异，同时具备在理解之后凝合这些差异的创造力。
我对车学庆的工作感兴趣，部分也是因为我在纽约的生活圈子里有许多影响着我的人，他们
都是美国人，同时也可以说是亚洲人。在我的展览文本里，我引用了车学庆的一段关于《来
自蒙古的白色尘埃》的文字：
“所有的元素都被植入历史的语境来呈现，为的是减少来自不同民族文化的亚洲人彼此之间
的地理距离和心理间隔。
© ARTFORUM.COM.CN
http://artforum.com.cn/words/11386#Your Guide to the Best Shows to See in New York
Senior US Editor Andrew Durbin selects his highlights of the shows in the city during Frieze Week
By ANDREW DURBIN
01 MAY 2018
Cici Wu, ‘Upon Leaving the White Dust’
47 Canal
18 April – 27 May
The Korean-American artist and novelist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha once described memory ‘as a collective
source, as almost having physical and organic dimensions … It represents a body of time […] within which our
existence is marked like a wound.’ At the time of that writing – which artist Cici Wu quotes extensively in the
press release to her show ‘Upon Leaving the White Dust’ – Cha was attempting to finish her 1980 film White
Dust from Mongolia, with her brother James in South Korea. Neither the film nor its accompanying novel
was completed when a New York City security guard raped and murdered Cha in 1982. In Wu’s astonishing
exhibition – her first solo show at 47 Canal – the artist returns to Cha’s unfinished work in a melancholy
installation and film that presents, as homage, the wounds left by memory and time.
Wu’s show features small, mostly white, plaster-cast objects arranged in a grid on the gallery’s blonde wood
floor: hands posed atop one another, bare feet, a mop, a train’s locomotive car, Lehmann Gross Bahn train
tracks, an airplane and small, globular lights that pulse faintly in the half-dark. The objects are partially lit by a
stark white film which fluctuates in brightness based on light data collected from Cha’s White Dust. In the dimly
lit gallery, one might be tempted to first refer to the space as ‘dreamy’ or ‘dream-like’. It isn’t. Instead, Wu’s
pieces crackle with the presence of history and the obscure mysteries that lie within them. ‘Upon Leaving’, with
its ‘plurality of entrances’, as Wu writes, recalls Freud’s interpretation of the uncanny as the familiar which the
subconscious has made unfamiliar. Here, world-historical narratives have plunged into small objects, endowing
Cici Wu, ‘Upon Leaving the White Dust’, 2018, them with pasts – and futures – the present has scrambled to suppress.
installation view, 47 Canal, New York.
Courtesy: the artist and 47 Canal, New York
© FRIEZE 2019
https://frieze.com/article/your-guide-best-shows-see-new-york10 Galleries to Visit Now on the Lower East Side
By Holland Cotter
April 26, 2018
Galleries, small and midsize, are having a rough ride. Rents keep climbing. So do
art-fair fees. And certain people who might help pay the gallery bills — collectors,
big-museum curators — keep not showing up except at a handful of spaces with
social cachet and publicity machines. Plus, a sizable portion of the art audience has
taken to doing its looking online, raising the question: Why have physical galleries
at all?
Because they’re the only places where you truly see new work, experience it. Scale,
texture, light, air, mood; all that changes when you’re physically present, shifting
positions, moving in close, backing away, hearing noise from the street. Most of the
galleries on the Lower East Side are still storefront-size, scaled for shopping, and
open on Sundays. They put you in intimate contact with objects, sensations and
ideas so you can examine them, stay with them, make them your own.
47 CANAL through May 27; 291 Grand Street, second floor, 47canal.us.
The American artist and writer Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), one of the
most intriguing figures of the 1970s, seems to have dropped from view for a
younger generation. So it’s great that Cici Wu, who was born in 1989 and came
to the United States from China in 2012, pays tribute to her in a show, “Upon
Leaving the White Dust,” that sculpturally evokes a film, “White Dust From
Mongolia,” that Cha shot on a trip to her native South Korea and that was left
unfinished when she died in New York City at the age of 31. Against a flickering
projection of white light, Ms. Wu sets an assemblage of small objects that refer
“Upon Leaving the White Dust,”
to images in the film: trains, an airplane, a mop, the silhouette of an urban skyline. an installation by Cici Wu at 47 Canal on Grand Street.Credit
“Memory, time, silence, words, and whiteness” were the essence of Cha’s art, wrote Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
the art historian Moira Roth, as they are of Ms. Wu’s homage.
© 2019 The New York Times Company
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/arts/design/
art-galleries-to-see-now-on-the-lower-east-side.html2018.03.20 Tue, by Benny Shaffer
Migratory Practice
“Scraggly Beard Grandpa,” Capsule Shanghai
(1st Floor, Building 16, Anfu Lu 275 Nong, Xuhui
District, Shanghai, China),
November 4 — December 22, 2017
Writing from Paris in 1991 under the pseudonym “No Beard Fei,” Fei Dawei penned
a letter to fellow art critic and curator “Scraggly Beard Grandpa,” the pen name of
Li Xianting in Beijing. Fei’s letter was a response to Li’s concern that “if art leaves
its cultural motherland, it necessarily withers.” Li had previously asked Fei, “Do
you believe you have made an impact on the Western art world?” In the wake of
China’s first avant-garde art movement, known as the ‘85 New Wave, many
artists from China who moved to the West for political reasons were grappling
with how to actively engage their new social worlds; Fei claimed that Chinese
artists living abroad could still address “contemporary cultural questions in their new
environments.” Several decades later, the letter from Fei and Li becomes a point
of departure for the exhibition “Scraggly Beard Grandpa” at Capsule Shanghai.
Curated by Cici Wu and Wang Xu, co-founders of PRACTICE, an artist-run space
previously in an old apartment in New York’s Chinatown where they hosted a
year-round residency program open to artists from around the world, the group
show staged a casual encounter between the Shanghai art scene and twelve
PRACTICE alumni. PRACTICE was established nearly three years ago in the
Chinatown location as a place for artists—mostly friends of the founders—to
live and make work while passing through the city. The space became a studio, “杂毛连须公”，展览现场，胶囊上海，鸣谢胶囊上海
exhibition space, and mahjong house to cultivate a community, however transient, “Scraggly Bearded Grandpa”, exhibition view, Capsule Shanghai,
for conversations between artists, and, well, practice. courtesy Capsule Shanghai.
The founders of PRACTICE, who were born in China, make reference in the text
that accompanies the exhibition to the early wave of Chinese artists who moved
to New York in the 1990s, which included Zhang Huan, Cai Guo-qiang, and
others. While times have certainly changed for China-born artists and the
general contours of the art world since the 1990s, the core function of PRACTICE as a
quasi-familial support network reveals a social practice that stands in for a sense
of community that the early generation likely lacked. Chinese artists who moved
to New York in the 1980s and 1990s were largely viewed as political exiles in the
West. Although many of the artists from China, both then and now, were trained at
prestigious art academies in their home country, and later in U.S.-based art
programs as well, the dual challenges of being far from home and trying to stay afloat
in New York’s unforgiving urban context placed many in precarious postions. Well
aware of this history, the founders of PRACTICE have established a strong foothold in
Chinatown, which has been the location for an increasingly mobilized
anti-gentrification movement that overlaps, at times in uncomfortable ways, with
New York’s contemporary art world. The scene has been set for intervention.
“杂毛连须公”，展览现场，胶囊上海，鸣谢胶囊上海
“Scraggly Bearded Grandpa”, exhibition view, Capsule Shanghai,
courtesy Capsule Shanghai.For PRACTICE, langauge becomes a metaphor for connection and disconnection.
The shared languages of the art world — English, installation, site-specific — cre-
ate bonds and opportunities for artistic exchange. Today’s fluid global movement
of artists (not only from China) no longer reflects an art world linked primarily to
national ties and fixed geographical locations. Multilingual art communities have
sparked mobility that becomes a powerful form of agency, and allows artists
to shift their practices from survival mode—many artists from the first wave of
China’s avant-garde painted portraits on the streets of New York to get by—to
social practice, affective labor, and the processes of community-making. The
collective of artists— several born in China, though most from elsewhere —
reunited in Capsule Shanghai for “Scraggly Beard Grandpa,” where the gallery floor
was painted gray to resemble their space in New York. There was a sense that a
set of shared experiences were actively transplanted into the unfamiliar territory
of Shanghai, a city with a rapidly expanding art scene marked, in large part, by
pragmatic, market-oriented tastes.
Without an overarching thematic conceit, the works in the exhibition seem
to bounce words off of one another, and produce a collage of distinctly
accented modes of art-making. In the garden, Rania Ho’s installation Genus: Verduos
Suburbanus Bucolia & Love Hate Relationship (all works cited, 2017) ironizes the
meticulous pruning of plants for topiaries in suburban contexts. Wearing inflatable,
nylon ripstop costumes meant to function as camouflage, a single-channel video,
alongside the bulbous costumes, depicts a whimsical “love hate relationship” that
was performed on site. Yunyu “Ayo” Shih’s “Before It Happens” constructs a fragile
barrier near the entrance of the gallery with modular sculptural elements made
of concrete and metal. They form a wall defined by negative space, and gesture “杂毛连须公”，展览现场，胶囊上海，鸣谢胶囊上海
to partition walls built between bordering nations. The skeletal structure creates “Scraggly Bearded Grandpa”, exhibition view, Capsule Shanghai,
courtesy Capsule Shanghai.
frames through which viewers can speak to one another across the space as they
tread lightly around the precarious object.
Almost as if to hide away in silence, Irini Miga’s Landscape for a Thought works on a
poetic micro-scale to produce an anti-monumental work that is terse yet profoundly
meditative—a tiny, cut-out cone from the wall filled with the sawdust of its own making.JoãoVasco
Paiva’s The Last Kauai Bird I and II features an unmatched pair of Nike sneakers carved
out of hardened volcanic lava by local artisans in Bali, along with an audio recording of
supposedly the last Kauai Oo bird calling out for a mate; in this case, the ultimate absence of
communication is extinction. Zheng Yuan’s Game works within the visual idioms of the video
essay as it contemplates how we experience real and virtual worlds through cameras and
simulation technologies. From live-broadcast sports to 8-bit video games and Chinese scroll
paintings, Zheng’s analytical dissection of ways of seeing adds a dense coda to the exhibition
for viewers to reflect back on the visual languages of the other artists’ works in the exhibition.
The concept that “each person is their own territory,” a statement from Fluxus artist Robert
Filliou quoted in the exhibition text, reinforces the singularity of the artists’ distinctive styles,
and helps to patch over the idiosyncratic gaps between the artists’ works.
“杂毛连须公”，展览现场，胶囊上海，鸣谢胶囊上海
“Scraggly Bearded Grandpa”, exhibition view, Capsule Shanghai,
courtesy Capsule Shanghai.Reflecting on the role that language plays in bringing together PRACTICE’s
artists on their intersecting itineraries in and out of Chinatown, the exhibition feels
like an unfinished conversation that trails off after a long night of talking over
hotpot. As stated in the exhibition text, “language, evolving from being a tool to a habit,
became a game.” In the exhibition’s game of artistic languages, there is a sense
that the human connections and shared experiences between the artists add
layers of meaning that transcend the works themselves, though this remains
partially untapped and requires further context about the artists’ on-the-ground social practice
in Chinatown; this dimension of shared experience cannot so easily be sensed in Shanghai, where
the feeling of immediacy and urgency feels distant. Yet unlike other group shows that try and fail
to develop a coherent conceptual thread, the show’s deliberate avoidance of an imposed themat-
ic unity presents a curatorial provocation. Produced at the time of Shanghai Art Week, with its
typical mayhem of art fairs and champagne parties, “Scraggly Beard Grandpa” feels refresh-
ingly out of place in Shanghai’s burgeoning contemporary art world—one that increasingly re-
sembles anywhere else in the metropolitan constellation of art world capitals.
“杂毛连须公”，展览现场，胶囊上海，鸣谢胶囊上海
“Scraggly Bearded Grandpa”, exhibition view, Capsule Shanghai,
courtesy Capsule Shanghai.
http://www.randian-online.com/np_review/migratory-practice/Highlights from Frieze London
October 12, 2017 by Giulia Ponzano
Frieze London 2017, Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Mark Blower/Frieze.
The 15th edition of Frieze London closed on Sunday 8th October:
offering its visitors a diverse and dynamic selection of international emerging
and established artists, alongside a curated non-profit programme of artist
commissions, films and talks, established itself as one of the of the most
exciting destination in the contemporary art world. The fair brought together
more than 160 of the world’s leading galleries, attracting over 68,000 visitors.
The Focus section, including 32 galleries aged twelve years or
younger and curated by Fabian Schöneich (Portikus, Frankfurt) and Ruba Katrib
(SculptureCenter, New York), offered interesting presentation which
attracted significant institutional attention and resulted in acquisitions from
international institutions and private foundations. This section has appeared
as the most exciting one, remaining the definitive destination to discover
emerging talents.
The New-York gallery, 47 Canal (booth H13) presented a well-balanced group
of artists, in which Cici Wu’s sculptures sat on the plinths at the center of the
booth. Wu (b. 1989), who grew up in Beijing and studied in Hong Kong,
has moved to United States in 2012. Even if her work could looks like soap
bubble, as, for instance, Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light (2017), they have
a sort of functional aspect: these objects are meant to be taken with you
to the movies, where you can use it to record up to two hours of ambient
light on an SD card. A device that seemingly ‘absorb’ the atmosphere and
recreates a magical and minimal aura in the space where is displayed. Wu, mixing Cici Wu, Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light (terrence), 2017. Photo by Joerg Lohse.
electronics and machinery, is truly able to surround us with an intimate, Image courtesy of the artist and 47 Canal, New York.
special joy.
https://theartling.com/en/artzine/highlights-from-frieze-london/10 Artists to Watch at Frieze London, 1:54, and Sunday
Artsy Editors Oct 6, 2017 7:07 pm
Cici Wu
B. 1989, Beijing. Lives and works in New York
47 Canal, Focus Section, Booth H13
Installation view of Billie Zangewa at Blank Projects's booth at Frieze London, 2017.
Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy of Mark Blower/Frieze.
Frieze London
Frieze London built its brand by claiming itself to be the defining voice on the Cici Wu, Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light (terrence), 2017.
cutting edge of contemporary art. The fair still remains fertile ground to discover Photo by Joerg Lohse. Courtesy of the artist and 47 Canal, New York.
new talent and fresh-out-of-MFA-program young upstarts, though to be fair, the
art world’s overall attention has since broadened in scope. (Reflecting that trend, Sitting on its plinth at the center of 47 Canal’s Focus booth, Wu’s
the winners of Frieze’s own Stand Prize for its Focus section of young galleries Foreign Object #1 Fluffy Light (terrence) (2017) looks a bit like a soap bubble.
have consisted only of artists born in the first half of the 20th century for the Closer inspection reveals two light meters affixed to the glass orb’s
past two years.) front and a set of blinking LED indicator lights nestled in its center amid
other electronics. The work is a functional object of a sort: It’s meant to be
Meanwhile, Frieze’s satellite fairs continue to provide collectors opportunities to taken with you to the movies—the source of inspiration for much of the
dig deeper, exploring what directions contemporary art may head in next. artist’s practice—where you can use it to record up to two hours of ambient
Contemporary African art fair 1:54 brings together the strongest galleries globally light on an SD card. At Frieze, the piece blinks as it records the relatively
showing artists who hail from the continent, while emerging fair Sunday offers unwavering and flat light of the fair’s tent. But, during a January show at the
25 young galleries a chance to show a tight selection of artists in a triple-height gallery (which she shared with Ho King Man and Wang Xu, two other Chinese
industrial space just down the road from the Frieze tent. expatriates with whom she started a Chinatown exhibition space cum residen-
cy called Practice) it sat on the armrest of a theater seat and played back the
That’s a lot of ground to cover. Artsy’s editors combed all three fairs in order to grayscale recording of Wu’s trip to see Moonlight.
highlight 10 artists you’d do well to keep an eye on in the near future.
- Alexander Forbes and Molly Gottschalk
© 2019 Artsy
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-artists-watch-frieze-london-1-54-sundayCAN ARCHIVES BE PERFORMED? SU YU-HSIEN AND CICI WU
RESPOND IN TWO NEW WORKS
February 26, 2017
Wu. Detail from “Untitled (White Dust from Mongolia)”, 2017. Cici Wu. “Untitled”, 2017. Mixed-Media Installation.
Mixed-Media Installation. Courtesy of the Artist. Courtesy of the Artist.
Brought on by the over saturation of information in our present day, exploring archives has
A flickering display of light and shadow, materiality and translucency, New York-
become a popular topic for contemporary artists. How does one position oneself in relationship
based artist Cici Wu’s “Untitled” is comprised of two parts: a large light projection
to historical archives? What happens when the archive itself is dust-ridden, fragmented, or
on the back wall, and an array of hand-made objects strewn on the floor. Through
unrealized? Su Yu-Hsien and Cici Wu have created two immersive and interconnected worlds
researching archival materials surrounding “White Dust from Mongolia,” an unfinished
as an attempt to grapple with these challenging questions for “A Disappearing Act,” on view
film by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, the work is a reconstruction of the latter’s original
at the artist founded non-profit Triangle, in Brooklyn. The works in the exhibition do not provide
conception. A Korean-American artist, novelist, and filmmaker active in the 70s and
clear cut answers, instead they call attention to research, ongoing process, and the profoundly
80s, Cha’s life was tragically cut short in 1982, her uncompleted project frozen in time.
ungraspable nature of time and memory.
Using a quirky device of her own invention, Wu recorded the changing intensities of light
from Cha’s only surviving 30-minute footage, juxtaposing it with objects and images
that correspond frame-by-frame to the film’s storyboard—a delicate pair of plaster
hands, a faded photo from a newspaper’s missing-persons column, a slowly-turning
mobile of colored glass panes. The fragmented piece lies between arrest and motion,
ghostly apparitions and incessant retreat. The interplay between different textures
and materials, shimmering lights, and temporalities leaves the viewer with a sense of
ambiguity.In framing the exhibition around the theme of “disappearance”, curator Xiaofei Mo blends the
poetic and political—seemingly irreconcilable terms in today’s climate—into one open-ended rubric.
Whether physically or metaphorically, the act of disappearance can be seen as a performative
strategy, in which the subject is able to not only draw attention to oppressive structures, but also
effectively evade them.
For Huang Hua-Chen, disappearing from public view was a consciously performative act integral
to his practice, which, along with his satirical declaration that “Prophet” was “possibly the worst
in Chinese-language plays”, deliberately eroded and diffused the notion of authorship and heroic
individualism. Similarly, if Su’s resurrection of that particular moment in the history of
Taiwanese theater placed Huang back in the spot-light, his act of restaging nevertheless points to
how the self-contained entity of originality is further punctured by reinterpretation and the small
Su Yu-Hsien. “Prophet”, 2017. Two-Channel Video Installation. transformations therein enacted.
Courtesy of the Artist
In “The Aesthetics of Disappearance“, Paul Virilio talks about how photographic technologies may
Su Yu-Hsien, an artist hailing from Taiwan and showing in New York for the first accidentally capture ‘absent’ moments of the everyday, as something akin to feelings of vertigo
time, takes a different approach. In a curtained room within the exhibition space, or epileptic fits. As someone who is “obsessed with feelings”, Wu is interested in bringing affective
Su’s two-channel film installation stages a reenactment of “Prophet“, a play experiences back into an expanded cinema primarily occupied with technological discourse. Although
written in 1965 by Taiwanese playwright Huang Hua-Chen, whose artistic and each scene is materialized as a disparate object and organized in a certain order, somehow our
literary achievements have now sunken into relative obscurity. As red velvet physical-emotional interactions with them escape chronological order. Take from the work what you
curtains gradually pull apart in one video—only to reveal more layers of curtain will, a miniature city of memories, or an abstract machine that churns historical materials into playful
behind layers—an elderly couple quarrels in an otherwise empty theater. The heated reimagining and quiet resilience.
dialogue highlights the discrepancy between the man’s self-illusions of grandeur
as an avant-garde artist, and the mundane reality of his failure to achieve (to his For both artists, it is not a matter of establishing artistic lineages via reworking, but rather one
wife, all his novels, paintings, scripts, and architectural blueprints are nothing more of finding affinities with figures embedded in history, thus opening up unexpected networks of
than ‘bullshit aesthetics’). Presented in the form of an absurdist ‘anti-theater’, connections and belongings. Wu discovers in Cha overlapping terrains: the itinerant identity of
the film reveals contradictions within modernism itself, as well as the impossibility immigrants, female subjectivity, and the aesthetics of abstraction, while Su finds in self-effacement,
of importing a Western transcendental man to the social-economic structure of satire, and historical reference a way to bridge theater and cinema. Both works constitute small,
post-war Taiwan. sensual ruptures within the technological seamlessness through which we experience time.
“…CURATOR XIAOFEI MO BLENDS THE POETIC AND PO- Su Yu-Hsien and Cici Wu “A Disappearing Act” runs through Feb 16-Feb 27, 2017, Saturday – Thursday, 12 –
LITICAL—SEEMINGLY IRRECONCILABLE TERMS 8pm at Triangle, 20 Jay Street, #317, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
IN TODAY’S CLIMATE—INTO ONE OPEN-ENDED RUBRIC.” © 2018 CULTBYTES.
http://cultbytes.com/reporting/on-
view/archive-su-yu-hsien-cici-wu/You can also read
